Environmental Racism

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Up to the late 1960s, racism was defined as a doctrine, dogma, ideology,
or set of beliefs. The central theme of this doctrine was that race
determined culture. Some cultures were deemed superior to others;
therefore, some races were superior and others inferior. During the 1960s
the definition of racism was expanded to include the practices, attitudes,
and beliefs that supported the notion of racial superiority and
inferiority. Such beliefs and practices produced racial discrimination.

However, researchers argue that to limit the understanding of racism to
prejudicial and discriminatory behavior misses important aspects of
racism. Racism is also a system of advantages or privileges based on race.
In the
American context, many of the privileges and advantages available to
whites stem directly from racial discrimination directed at people of
color. Therefore, racism results not only from personal ideology and
behavior, but also from the personal thoughts and actions that are
supported by a system of cultural messages and institutional policies and
practices. Racism is thus more fully understood if one sees it as the
execution of prejudice and discrimination coupled with power, privilege,
and institutional support. It is aided and maintained by legal, penal,
educational, religious, and business institutions, to name a few.

Environmental racism is an important concept that provided a label for
some of the environmental activism occurring in minority and low-income
communities. In particular, it links racism with environmental actions,
experiences, and outcomes. In the broadest sense, environmental racism and
its corollary, environmental discrimination, is the process whereby
environmental decisions, actions, and policies result in racial
discrimination or the creation of racial advantages. It arises from the
interaction of three factors: (1) prejudicial belief and behavior, (2) the
personal and institutional power to enact policies and actions that
reflect one's own prejudices, and (3) privilege, unfair advantages
over others and the ability to promote one's group over another.
Thus, the term
environmental racism,
or
environmental discrimination,
is used to describe racial disparities in a range of actions and
processes, including but not limited to the (1) increased likelihood of
being exposed to environmental hazards; (2) disproportionate negative
impacts of environmental processes; (3) disproportionate negative impacts
of environmental policies, for example, the differential rate of cleanup
of environmental contaminants in communities composed of different racial
groups; (4) deliberate targeting and siting of noxious facilities in
particular communities; (5) environmental blackmail that arises when
workers are coerced or forced to choose between hazardous jobs and
environmental standards; (6) segregation of ethnic minority workers in
dangerous and dirty jobs; (7) lack of access to or inadequate maintenance
of environmental amenities such as parks and playgrounds; and (8)
inequality in environmental services such as garbage removal and
transportation.

During the 1980s people of color began organizing environmental campaigns
to prevent the poisoning of farm workers with pesticides; lead poisoning
in inner-city children; the siting of noxious facilities—landfills,
polluting industrial complexes, and incinerators—in communities
like Warren County, North Carolina; Altgeld Gardens (the "toxic
doughnut" on Chicago's South-side); Convent,
Louisiana's "cancer alley;" and Kettleman City,
California. Activists also demanded the cleanup of communities like
Triana, Alabama that had been contaminated with dichlorodiphenyl
trichloroethane (DDT), and the monitoring or closure of facilities like
Emelle, Alabama's commercial hazardous landfill (the largest of its
kind in the United States). In addition, they questioned the placement of
large numbers of nuclear waste dumps on Native-American reservations.
Meanwhile, activists, scholars, and policymakers began investigating the
link between race and exposure to environmental hazards. Two influential
studies exploring this relationship—one by the U.S. General
Accounting Office (USGAO) and the other by the United Church of Christ
(UCC)—found that African-Americans and other people of color were
more likely to live close to hazardous waste sites and facilities than
whites. The study by the UCC was particularly important because it made an
explicit
connection between race and the increased likelihood of being exposed to
hazardous wastes. The studies also made the issue of race and the
environment more salient in communities of color.

In 1977 Sidney Howe, Director of the Human Environment Center, argued that
the poor were exposed to more pollution than others, and that those
creating the most pollution live in the least polluted places. He used the
term
environmental justice
to describe the corrective measures needed to address this disparity. The
term
environmental racism
came into popular use at a conference held at the University
Michigan's School of Natural Resources in 1990. The conference,
which focused on race and environmental hazards, brought together scholars
and policymakers to discuss the relationship between racism and the
environment. In addition, the term
environmental equity movement
was used in the late 1980s to describe the growing movement to address
racial, gender, and class environmental inequalities. However, by the
early 1990s the term
justice
replaced
equity
because environmental justice activists felt justice was a more inclusive
term that incorporated the concepts of equality and impartiality. The
movement focuses on two kinds of justice: (1) distributive justice, who
bears what costs and benefits, and (2) corrective justice, concerned with
the way individuals are treated during a social transaction. The
environmental justice movement is concerned with distributive justice
especially as it relates to identifying past racial injustices and
advantages as well as the quest for future remedies. The movement is also
concerned with corrective justice as it relates to
corporate-worker–community relations and government–local
community interactions.

Taylor, Dorceta E. (2000). "The Rise of the Environmental Justice
Paradigm: Injustice Framing and the Social Construction of Environmental
Discourses."
American Behavioral Scientist
43(4):508–580.

United Church of Christ (UCC). (1987).
Toxic Waste and Race in the United States: A
National Report on the Racial and Socio-Economic Characteristics of
Communities with Hazardous Waste Sites.
New York.

U.S. General Accounting Office (USGAO). (1983).
Siting of Hazardous Waste Landfills and Their Correlation with the
Racial and Socio-Economic Status of Surrounding Communities.
Washington, DC.